1. After finally making it to shoot another Creative Mornings event last weekend, I’ve had this burning desire to paint. Thanks to Prashant Miranda whose daily visual journal keeping inspired me to no end. I am a journal keeper too but for some reason it has become hard to write down my life lately and I’ve tried many times to start photographically journaling my days, but let’s just say when you are constantly working to organise your clients’ thousands of photographs, on a computer, the last thing you want to do is add more photographs. It’s unfortunate and I haven’t given up but it’s just not a good time right now.

Anyway, so I mentioned this to the hubs who tried to convince me to attend Prashant’s watercolour workshop yesterday, to which I answered, “I don’t even have any painting supplies!” Well, the man needs no more motivation to immediately look up the timings of his favourite art supplies store and we are off… to VT. About an hour later, we have emerged with a tiny metal box of watercolour paints, a few brushes and some beautiful paper.

My painting experiments may never be shown to another soul on the planet but God, I love how that colour spreads from the brush to the paper at different patterns and rates depending on the amount of pressure or water you apply. It’s magical.

This may be another of my whims but the good thing is the hubs is an artist with a lot of experience in painting and he tells me the paints will last us a good ten years and if by then, I have lost my interest, so help me God, our children shall paint.

2. Having satisfied the inner artists in us, we headed to Crawford market to satisfy my other the not-so-new-nor-secret passion. Food. More specifically cheese. One day, on one of my googling adventures, I came across a blog listing a place at the market where they sell really high quality cheese at wholesale prices. So of course, I had to check this out and while we didn’t find the exact same shop, we did find a wholesale cheese seller and it’s pretty much a piece of heaven. They have every cheese that I have ever heard of and it’s delicious and 30-40% cheaper than what you’d find at regular stores. It’s called Legend, shop # 118, 3rd Lane, Fruit Section, Crawford Market. You’re welcome.

3. Some weeks ago, a friend invited us to the book launch of Room 000 by Kalpish Ratna at the Maharashtra Mitra Mandal Library (aka Mcubed Library) in Bandra. We were intrigued. Both by the book and the venue. A library?! In Bandra?! How had we never heard of/seen this before?!

So of course we went and it was a fantastic event and we came back with a great book but best of all, the sweet sweet knowledge of this library. It is primarily a children’s library to which they quite recently added a ‘Grown Up’ section where you will find a fantastic selection of books, both fiction and non-fiction. I was most excited about the fiction section because I grew up a lover of fiction books and then married this man who has about 200 books in different sizes and shapes, none of which are fiction. So I started reading non-fiction and I love it but I also still love to escape into the world of fictional characters but a) we have not enough place in the world to call our own for both of us to keep buying books (yes, I’ve tried reading on a Kindle and I.just.don’t.like.it) and b) I usually don’t read a fictional book twice so a library is our perfect solution!

I can keep reading my stories while we limit book collection to non-fictions that we know we will keep going back to.

Words cannot describe how glad my heart is to have found this library.

And that is all for now.

We are so grateful to have this beauty (inside and out) as a friend.

Your adventurous soul inspires me, friend.

This was SO much fun!

Today was the first of this season’s Organic Farmer’s Market which will run every Sunday (except for a few long weekends) until March. I can’t remember how exactly I found out about this apparently well-kept secret market but gosh, am I glad I did!

I used to be of the opinion that “organic” is a snobby, snooty-falooty, concept for people who don’t live on a strict budget but as I have been learning about food and also thanks to Robert’s cousin and her family who run a farm in Wisconsin, I’ve learnt that “organic” should be the way everyone eats. Good, healthy, uncontaminated food should be a right for all people. And also, farmers deserve immense respect and support. Somehow, we have come to expect fresh produce to be cheap and plenty but that usually comes at a high cost to the land, fauna, farmers, and ultimately our health.

The pesticides and herbicides used in conventional farming is highly toxic and pollutes the land and water. Non-organic produce may also be using genetically modified seeds which is a whole other can-o’-worms, but in a nutshell, it’s best avoided!

Even with all the arguments for organic produce, I’m not gonna lie, it is expensive and probably not yet possible to switch to all organic but remember that every time you do choose to buy from an organic farmer, you are encouraging more farmers to grow organic and then I think the simple rules of economics of supply and demand will eventually tilt in our favour when it comes to price! Also, the bees will thank you for trying.

To start off, educate yourself about the “dirtiest” fruits and vegetables. These are produce that you should try to buy organically because they are known to be the worst offenders when it comes to chemical pesticide and herbicide residue.

Secondly, if you live in Bombay and you’re not convinced about organic produce, just come to the Farmer’s Market, there are beautiful trees to sit under, food to be eaten, music to be enjoyed and friends to be made.

I freakin’ LOVED this week. It was only three days at the office for Rob and it is so much easier trying to organise things and actually plan to get together with friends when everyone has time off. It’s official, apart from the mad heat of October, I am a fan of this month.

So this week I am grateful for…

// Having Rob home. Even if he was working away, I loved having him home.

// A crazy rainstorm earlier this week. Just last weekend, I was mourning the unceremonious departure of monsoon without one last delicious downpour and then it stormed on Tuesday evening. Wind, thunder, lightning, the whole deal. Apart from all the chaos it caused for commuters, it was a pretty spectacular show.

// Watching The Terminal with the husband. I find it hard to find good movies with clean humour and a great story nowadays, so I am grateful that there’s plenty to choose from the older films!

// Planning and executing a home-cooked meal for a couple of our friends. It’s a lot of work but turns out that I have a lot of my mother in me, and that’s a good thing. I am nowhere near as expert as she is, but I’m enjoying the learning process.

// Transforming our living room, and using our very practical multi-purpose tables (designed by Rob) as one very long lunch table. We also transformed our bookshelf, side table and storage trunk into seats! Ah, Bombay living.

August was fabulous. Last month was pretty long and rough with a lot of late working nights for Rob and so we really savoured not one, but TWO long weekends in August! And we’re looking forward a few more delicious long-weekends interspersed through the next two months too. The latter part of the year is always fabulous in India. So much celebration happening. I can’t say I’m a fan of the loudness and the mess that most of it creates, but bring on the days off!

1. Found men selling coconuts on the street, so we filled up our arms and brought them home. So yummy. // 2. Loved having my parents in town for a good three weeks. // 3. Rob Skypeing in on the pre-launch live chat for Wilbur Sargunaraj’s Simple Superstar movie. We were pretty excited! // 4. Luscious greenery on our trek in the Matheran area // 5. We had a good time sitting under this waterfall in absolute awe. // 6. Dahi Handi time // 7. Heading out to shoot in Kerala and Bangalore for the last ten days of August // 8. Gorgeous shoot location in Kumarakom // 9. Our wedding photo up on the wall of photos in my parents’ home in Bangalore.

One of the funnest things we did was go on a rain-trek about two hours outside of Mumbai with a bunch of our friends. Having gone to school in Ooty where our dorm parents would often take us on treks “as long as a piece of string” and varying difficulties, I was nostalgic and excited about this trek! It had been a long time since I’d last trekked anywhere so I think I was also slightly nervous but by the time we got to Neral station, and started walking out towards the hills, I couldn’t wait to just get off the roads and expected it to get progressively greener – which it did and cleaner – which it did not. In fact, as we climbed higher and higher upstream towards the waterfall, my heart sunk lower and lower. Every step we took, we were dodging another chips wrapper, plastic bottle, plastic bag, disposable plate, can, etc. Some bottles were lodged between the boulders where you expect clear stream water to be flowing unobstructed and free.

By the time we finally reached the waterfall, I leaned against a big boulder looked at Rob and said, “I’m going to have to have a good cry about this when we get home.” But as a wise friend advised me recently, “if there are feelings coming at you, just let them come”. So I cried. Right there. And I wondered how nobody else was bursting into tears looking at this…

The “problem” is that I know more than I can comfortably ignore. To me, this isn’t simply about an annoying Indian trait we have of trashing the place, it’s about how we live. It’s about selfish, careless, unthinking, profit-oriented living.

I know that aluminium cans will take 80+ years to decompose, that chips wrappers are generally made of metalized polypropylene which is an impossible-to-separate fusion of metal and plastic and will probably take a couple 100 or more years to completely break down (ie, not in our lifetime), plastic bags also take 100s of years to fully decompose and in the meantime emit methane into the atmosphere, styrofoam simply does NOT biodegrade… Let’s not even get into how much of this plastic is washing into the oceans, harming marine life and/or being ingested by marine life and somewhere along the chain, being ingested by us.

So what are we doing carelessly using this stuff?

On our way down the first waterfall we visited, I was holding my phone precariously in my hand (much to the consternation of my husband) as I manoeuvred myself over slippery rocks so I could take photos of all this garbage everywhere because I wanted to write about it.

My hope is not to scare you into realising by my use of all caps, that THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM, PEOPLE!!!!!!!

Maybe you are passionate about some other issue and don’t think that the issue of waste and more widely, our irresponsible obsession with STUFF (see here) is as urgent as the lives of human beings being trafficked around the world, or people dying of ALS and other incurable diseases but I want to humbly suggest that it’s all interconnected.

As hard as it is, we have to live with this tension of living in an all around broken world. While some of us have special callings and skills to help with certain issues, we are all called to care about other people and to care for this incredible planet that we have the privilege of living upon.

I hope I can share more with you how this tension plays out in my life and what we are learning through it.

I meant to post this on Saturday night and then somehow, Monday morning creeped up on us…

// For four whole days of non stop running water. We’ve gotten used to storing up and getting things done at specific times of the day depending on when the water will be available but it’s good to not have to be militant about it anymore. I am grateful for running water and I think having had it rationed was a good reminder of the importance of preservation. Water is precious and we ought to use it mindfully all the time, not just when it’s rationed.

// For the co-working space that I joined this last week. I’m not naturally extroverted so I know it will take me a while to make friends with my fellow co-working space folks but I really love the comfort of having people working away around me. And I am just so much more focused and productive in that space!

// For this wonderful group of ladies that I meet with every Wednesday. Again, it’s taken me a while to be comfortable and open up (and I’m still not a 100% there) but I am so grateful for how accepting they are of me anyway. And I am humbled and growing because of that.

// For a slew of new inquiries! I’m so humbled by your support. And no matter what happens, I am always happy to hear of couples getting married! Marriage is awesome.

// For the joy of seeing my work in print!

// For coconut water. On Sunday afternoon while we were walking home from a brunch/lunch, we met a couple of lungi-clad men who had just plucked a bunch of coconuts from some trees in Bandra and were selling them very affordably so of course, we filled up our arms with as many as we could carry home! Those beasts are heavy and so much harder to crack open to get to the water than they make it look! Every bit worth the effort carrying them home and hammering open though!

// For Sunday night Chinese dinner, ice-cream and the most delicious paan ever for my parents’ last night in Mumbai!

// For this little note left for me on the mirror this morning.

The ‘rents with my most adorable and cheeky little nephew.

It’s been a while since I last posted one of these. It’s not that I’m not grateful, it’s just harder to see the good things sometimes or have the energy to write about them! This week though…

// I am mostly grateful for my parents being here. Had a major “fish-cooking-lesson” with my mom yesterday at home. We went down to the ladies who sell fish, right down from our apartment and bought Prawns, Hilsa and Pomfret and learnt how to cook some of my favourite dishes. Now I know how to curb my inherently Bong fish cravings!

// My mother who doesn’t waste a moment to help, fixed our torn curtain that’s been hanging at our window (in it’s torn state) for the last couple of weeks! I no longer have to wake up to a gaping hole in our curtain.

// For new friends without whom surviving in this big city would be impossible. Impossible.

// For friends-of-friends passing through the city who we sometimes have the honour of helping out or hosting. It’s bittersweet because it’s so much easier forging friendships with people who actually live here but I’m grateful for even a few hours of really great conversation and hopefully our paths will cross again in the future!

// For my husband, who works so so hard and sometimes really late without ever complaining. And still manages to muster enough energy to be ALL there for me when he gets home even if it’s only for a few sweet minutes.

// For the rain, that keeps Mumbai temperatures down to bearable centigrades even if everything seems to be always wet. Seriously.  The floors, the walls, the dishes, the clothes, the shoes…

// For clients who endorse me so whole-heartedly and generously. Seriously. You are awesome.

Now here we are back in Mumbai which is about as opposite of Summerville as the north pole is of the south. Rob of course has swung back into work and routine like nobody’s business. Me… well, not so easy with me. The transition hasn’t been the smoothest to be honest. First of all, we came home with one bag left behind in Munich thanks to a storm in New York which lead to re-routing all of our flights and then further confusion ensued… We finally arrived home to some major water shortage so we went to bed sticky and mucky from 20+ hours of travel and then woke up to no water again after a jet-lagged and exhausted sleep of 12 hours. The water keeps copping out before I can finish a full load of laundry and I know it’s not the end of the world but it’s frustrating. Maybe it would be easy to leave it all behind if I got up and went to work and left all these household woes behind me but my work is here. Right here on this desk in my “office” which is also my living-room cum dining-room cum laundry-drying-room cum guest-room.

I’m trying to just roll with the punches but you know what, sometimes I just don’t want to roll with the punches. I want living in this city that I have a love-hate relationship with to not always feel like swimming against the freakin’ tide.

So here I am struggling to switch gears to back to “life-as-usual-as-a-reluctant-Mumbaiker” and I am reminded by a dear friend who recently became a mother in a painful and long labour of this song called Sparrow by Audrey Assad and I hold on to these words:

I sing because I’m happy
I sing because I’m free
His eye is on the sparrow
His eye is on the sparrow
And I know, He is watching me.

So folks, we’re at the end of another week and mostly I’m just grateful that we made it through to this point! I was in Patiala earlier this week for a wedding shoot and Rob’s been super busy too so it kinda felt like our wait to finally be on holiday would never end!

Anyway we are now well on our way to the US of A! We were mostly passed out on our Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt and now we are waiting it out to get on to our connecting flight to Newark!

Here are a couple of other things I am grateful for this week:

// Shooting a college-mate’s wedding in Patiala! Though I can’t say I cared so much about the weather (40-45 degrees celsius!), it’s so great to feel a part of the wedding party and not just be “the photographer”.

// My second-shooter, Genevieve who celebrated her birthday with our clients’ family on the first day of our shoot in Patiala! They ordered a cake for her, and made a big hullaballoo to make her feel special which she totally is! It’s so great to have (very talented) company on shoots and I look forward to shooting lots of weddings with her!

// And of course, last but most definitely not the least… here’s to a two week break from India because goodness knows I need it (Rob is much less unfazed by Bombay-Living than I tend to be but he is happy to be going back to his “gaon”)!

I’m going to be a total tourist and take photos of everything so watch this space (and Twitter) for more ;)

*Happy Dance*

Anyway, they did arrive on Saturday night and Rob and I enjoyed showing them around the city a little bit over the next two days. In the evenings, we stayed in and played some super fun card games! We are planning bring back a few of these from the US and start up a game night once we get back! *SO* fun!!

// Of course our friends from Canada brought us a HUGE jar of maple syrup. (And Maple biscuits, which my husband decided to toast to a crisp one night but that’s another story). Of course, we love our maple syrup on pancakes but last night I made chicken with a maple syrup-mustard-vinegar sauce. They call it “Man Pleasing Chicken”. Let me tell you, it’s a “Woman Pleasing Recipe”. Check it out here. Thanks Meg for the idea!

// Shooting at Kyoorius Awards 2014. I have to admit I had no idea how huge this was until I went for my briefing the evening before the event. This was my first time shooting an event like this and I was mega impressed. I had fun donning my little red elephant badge and bumping into some friends while I covered the event. ‘Twas a fun night!

// Late-night impromptu trips to Pinkberry!

// Bonhoeffer’s biography by Eric Metaxas. Rob has an amazing collection of books. But he reads a lot of non-fiction and I’m more a fiction reader so even though I’d noticed this book amongst his collection stowed away in our bed-storage, I didn’t think I would make it through the book on account of it being a biography and HUGE. (Don’t judge). Anyway, so while we were taking out some other books, I noticed another much smaller book by Bonhoeffer and thought, well, that I can handle. No sooner did I read the blurb at the back that I was in shock! Bonhoeffer was part of the plan to assassinate Hitler?!! WHAT?! I knew he was a pretty awesome and radical guy but this I did not know. So of course, we had to get out of bed and reopen the storage to get out the biography RIGHT THEN and I am absolutely loving it. There’s a lot of history in it about the World Wars and Hitler’s rise to power. Heavy stuff but Metaxas is a genius and he tells it like a story that doesn’t feel overbearing with facts. Obviously it’s pretty horrific story because you know what’s going to happen but I am learning so much and I know this is one of those books that I will be sad to finish.

// Summer fruits. I am just constantly amazed at how with the turn of seasons, fruits and veggies change too. And they change to help us deal with the seasons. It’s really incredible and I am so grateful for this.

// Home-made pizza night. Figuring out meal-plans is a tough job. Rob doesn’t care if we eat dal every night, I mean that’s pretty much what he did for 6 years of living in Bombay before we got married. I, however would be sad and pouty if I had to eat the same thing every day so I try to plan our meals and change things up a little but I realised that there’s some comfort in constancy too so last Friday I made pizza (dough and all, ahem ahem) and declared Fridays as “Pizza Night” and I am so looking forward to the comfort of that tonight.

// Having running water. Our building has been going through repair work for months now and it’s really quite frustrating because there’s banging and our windows which we so painstakingly cleaned when we moved in are filthy again, there were water problems and we had a leaky ceiling in our kitchen, etc etc. But we have water. And sometimes not having it makes me mad because I mean, what do you without water?!? But that also makes me all the more grateful that we do still have water.

// Living in Bandra. It is kinda way out of our league. But I sometimes wonder if we had settled for the cheaper places really far off or in really un-diverse areas just how miserable I would be. Apartment searching was a nightmare for me. But we got through it and God knew best. And I love living here.

// Blogs. I constantly find amazing things through other people’s blogs. This video is my favourite from this week. I actually found another talk by Dr Brené Brown on Jonas Peterson’s blog and then found a whole lot of amazing things by her. I just love this video. I’ve watched it about 20 times and it’s just so full of truth and wisdom.

Happy Weekend All!